In the Beginning There Was the Word

I was sitting in bed on Christmas Day listening to the service at Westminster Abbey on Radio 4... and I began thinking about how my religious upbringing might influence the way I speak/think about things. S many times, the Archbishop spoke of light and darkness, and used abstract concepts or metaphors. There's a lot of this in the Bible and having gone to very religious schools, I think maybe it has had an effect. I think you could note some similarities in the way I caption and title my works to how things are spoken about in the Bible, pairing the abstract with the everyday and trying to explain huge things with smaller everyday things. The monumental with the mundane.

I googled a few passages in which light is spoken about in the Bible...

I've been thinking recently about how religion, especially after hearing people talk of 'paradise' and 'hellfire', is so powerful and these abstract concepts are so compelling because they are so vague; it is up to the individual's imagination to picture paradise, and theirs will be unique too them - their very own tailored paradise. Referring to concepts such as darkness and light in my work might have the same effect - they can be interpreted very differently and it is up to the viewer what they get out of the work.

I also thought about the line in 'The Sound of Music' song about Maria, "how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand". There is a formula to why that is a poetic sentence - because it is mixing something intangible with something extremely familiar - the juxtaposition is stark. I am also reminded of the art medal we made 'Remnants of a Supernova Fitting Comfortably in the Palm' as it refers to holding something vast and entirely out of reach. One last point about the moonbeam is the futility of that sentence - hopelessness is poetic.